The Young Lady's Mentor eBook

This subject has brought me back to the point from
which I began,—­the practical utility
of a cultivated intellect, and the additional power
and usefulness it confers,—­raising its possessor
above all the mean and petty cares of daily life,
and enabling her to impart ennobling influences to
its most trifling details.

The power of thought, which I have so earnestly recommended
you to cultivate, is even still more practical, and
still more useful, when considered relatively to the
most important business of life—­that of
religion. Prayer and meditation, and that communion
with the unseen world which imparts a foretaste of
its happiness and glory, are enjoyed and profited
by in proportion to the power of controlling the thoughts
and of exercising the mind. Having a firm trust,
that to you every other object is considered subordinate
to that of advancement in the spiritual life, it must
be a very important consideration whether, and how
far, the self-education you may bestow on yourself
will help you towards its attainment. In this
point of view there can be no doubt that the mental
cultivation recommended in this letter has a much more
advantageous influence upon your religious life than
any other manner of spending your time. Besides
the many collateral tendencies of such pursuits to
favour that growth in grace which I trust will ever
remain the principal object of your desires, experience
will soon show you that every improvement in the reflective
powers, every additional degree of control over the
movements of the mind, may find an immediate exercise
in the duties of religion.

The wandering thoughts which are habitually excluded
from your hours of study will not be likely to intrude
frequently or successfully during your hours of devotion;
the habit of concentrating all the powers of your
mind on one particular subject, and then developing
all its features and details, will require no additional
effort for the pious heart to direct it into the lofty
employments of meditation on eternal things and communion
with our God and Saviour: at the same time, the
employments of prayer and meditation will in their
turn react upon your merely secular studies, and facilitate
your progress in them by giving you habits of singleness
of mind and steadiness of mental purpose.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] Carlyle.

[72] Matt. xxv. 23.

[73] Dan. xii. 3.

[74] “The vessel whose rupture occasioned the
paralysis was so minute and so slightly affected by
the circulation, that it could have been ruptured
only by the over-action of the mind”—­Bishop
Jebb’s Life.

[75] “This is nature’s law; she will never
see her children wronged. If the mind which rules
the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample
upon its slave, the slave is never generous enough
to forgive the injury but will rise and smile its
oppressor. Thus has many a monarch been dethroned.”—­Longfellow.